


old before our time

by HearJessRoar



Category: Julie and The Phantoms (TV)
Genre: M/M, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Rollerblades & Rollerskates, alex just wants to impress his boyfriend(?) and it goes as well as you expect
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-08
Updated: 2020-11-08
Packaged: 2021-03-08 20:08:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,333
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27452512
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HearJessRoar/pseuds/HearJessRoar
Summary: Julie is the best at giving gifts, except this one is slightly to the left of the mark.But the good news is that Alex is nothing if not determined, no matter how many times he falls on his face.
Relationships: Alex/Willie (Julie and The Phantoms)
Comments: 52
Kudos: 428





	old before our time

Julie presents him with the box with such a wide smile on her face that Alex instinctively smiles back before he’s even opened it. She bounces on her toes, sneakers squeaking against the garage floor as he sets the heavy gift down on the coffee table.

“What’s this for?” he asks, mostly to stall. Julie is one of those people who can’t stand the suspense when giving someone else a present, and messing with her is one of life’s little joys. She gives him a pleading look that says she knows what he’s doing, and Alex laughs.

He pulls the paper off in one long tear, and pops open the top of the box.

“Jules-”

She cuts him off, wringing her hands. “You were talking the other day about how Willie likes to tease you about keeping up with him, and then Reggie was telling me about how you guys used to take your sister to the rink on Saturdays, so I thought-”

He pulls out a shiny rollerblade, pink and green zig zags cutting through the black plastic. He spins one of the neon green wheels with his finger and feels tears prick at the corners of his eyes.

Julie is looking at him so hopefully, and Alex carefully sets the box aside to pull her into a tight hug. “This was really sweet of you, Jules,” he says, her arms coming to rest just as securely around his waist. “Thanks.”

She pulls away, still smiling. “I have to go to Flynn’s,” she says, tucking her hands into her pockets. “I’ll see you guys later.”

Alex is still waving goodbye to her, rollerblade back in hand, when Luke pops into existence next to him. He leans his elbow on Alex’s shoulder and grins smugly. “You gonna tell her you don’t know how to blade, or…?”

Alex pushes him off, clutching the rollerblade to his chest. “Absolutely not, this is the nicest thing anyone has done for me in years. I can use quads, how hard can blades be?”

Luke is still looking at him like this is gonna be the funniest thing he’s ever seen, and Alex flips him off, sitting on the couch to pull off his shoes. 

“Oh, jumping right into it, I see.”

He tightens the blades, and gets shakily to his feet.

They immediately go out from under him and he lands on the couch with an _oomph_. Despite his amusement of just a few seconds ago, Luke reaches out frantically. Too late to catch him, but it's the thought that counts.

" _How hard can blades be?_ " Luke repeats sardonically, his wide eyes betraying exactly how concerned he is by this.

Alex huffs, and tries again.

It takes him the better part of two weeks to get any speed on them, and he mostly has to practice in the garage when Julie is asleep. He doesn’t want her to find out that her gift was slightly misinformed and feel bad about it. It was an incredibly thoughtful present, and Alex is bound and determined to put them to their intended use.

Luke and Reggie have been supportive, and they take turns ducking under his arm to prop him up while he gets used to a new center of gravity.

Reggie used to blade when they would take Mel to the rink. He thought he looked cooler on them than on quads (Alex would never admit that, yes. Yes he _did_.) and his skills had not gone unnoticed by the pretty girls who would crowd around the low wall on the outside of the rink, trying to catch Reggie’s attention. 

Mel wasn’t the only reason they’d gone skating so often; Reggie had _insisted._

He turns out to be a pretty good teacher, correcting Alex's stance so he stops crashing his toes into each other while he rolls.

Luke is like Alex, and only knows how to balance on quad skates. And not much more than that, Alex recalls. Luke tended to stick to the wall when they'd go skating, and used to let Mel pull him slowly by the hands to make her feel important. Like she was protecting him.

None of them talk about his little sister out loud, but Alex knows they're thinking about her, too. He hopes that wherever she is, she's safe and warm and happy. He hopes that his death didn't hurt her too much.

And Alex hopes that she remembers him and his friends the way they were, holding her hands at the skating rink and eating half cold pizza with her like she was their sister, too.

God, she'd only been fourteen when he died.

Julie reminds him so much of her sometimes. The thought drifts carelessly across his mind as he makes a quick turn before he hits the garage door. He's started using the driveway instead, and picked it up pretty quickly in his own opinion. He had been pretty fast in quads, but the blades roll faster and with less effort.

He starts teaching himself to skate backwards, just for fun.

That's when he trips right into Julie.

She catches him by the backs of his elbows, rights him back onto his feet, and laughs as he spins to face her. She has a journal in one hand, an apple in the other, and a pencil stuck into her hair. Clearly on her way to a lyrics jam with Luke in the garage.

"You could have just told me I bought you the wrong kind of skates, Alex." She says, the fondness tucked away in her voice warming his dead heart. She's looking at him with her head tipped to the side, curls spilling over her shoulder as the low sunset reflects off her glasses.

He grins down at her, towering more than usual on top of his inlines.

"Absolutely not," he says, repeating what he'd already told Luke. "Who squealed?"

Julie takes a bite of her apple. "Reggie. He's terrible at keeping secrets."

Alex snorts.

"When are you gonna show Willie?"

And Alex is still a little embarrassed by how invested his friends are in his relationship, but at the same time he's so touched that Julie is genuinely interested.

"Tomorrow, I think. I'm supposed to meet him at the boardwalk."

“I’d tell you to break a leg, but that doesn’t seem appropriate,” Julie says, her nose crinkling with amusement.

“No kidding. Did you know ghosts can bruise? Because I didn’t.” Alex pulls up the hem of his shorts to show her the beginnings of a deep purple stain on the side of his thigh. It starts at his knee and goes all the way up to his hip, and he tells her so.

She pokes at it with her journal hand and Alex yelps, slapping her fingers away.

Yeah. A lot like his sister.

Two weeks of practice and he still doesn’t feel super confident in his ability to not trip and fall flat on his face in front of the boy he likes so much it makes his chest ache.

He should have practiced ghosting himself around in the skates, Alex realizes too late.

But it _is_ too late, and the wheels go out from under him as he lands, like he’s a newborn giraffe, all awkward long limbs trying to staggerstep his way back to balance.

The boardwalk is full of people, but no one sees.

This far away from Julie, he's still invisible, thank god.

Thrown by his bad landing and still trying to recover, Alex pinwheels his arms and hopes that Willie didn’t see any of that, either.

He couldn’t get that lucky, of course he couldn’t.

There’s laughter pealing from behind him, and then a steady hand on the small of his back. Willie’s fingers grip his shirt for just a fraction of a second, and Alex wonders if he actually scared him.

“Whatcha got there, hotdog?” he asks, sliding around to look Alex in the eye, his hand dragging along to rest on Alex’s hip. He’s shorter than he usually is now that Alex is up on skates, and he has to tip his head back further.

Alex definitely isn’t staring at his throat, all open exposed plane of skin, begging to be kissed-

“Julie bought me some blades,” he says proudly. “I’m very bad at them.”

"You look pretty good to me," Willie says with a wink, his hand still on Alex's belt loop like he's worried Alex is gonna topple over. His hair is braided back today, stray locks escaping to frame his face, and Alex desperately wants to tuck them back behind Willie’s ear.

So he does, and Willie smiles at him while he does it.

“You’re way too tall right now, ‘lex,” he teases. Before Alex can jibe him back about being short, Willie drops his board to the ground with a clatter in front of Alex’s feet. He steps onto it, and their new height difference is suddenly gone as Willie is _right there right there_ with one hand on Alex’s jaw.

He kisses him, soft like he’s still getting used to the idea, and Alex presses back, his own fingers tangling into the fabric of Willie’s shirt at his waist.

He breathes through his nose and Willie smiles against his mouth, then pulls away, resting his forehead against Alex’s.

They’re surrounded by people, but Alex can’t see anybody but him.

“That was really dumb of me,” Willie says, looking completely delighted about it. “Now neither of us has any balance.”

As if to prove his point, his skateboard suddenly lurches to the left, and Alex grabs desperately for his arms as Willie gives a startled laugh. “See? Look what you did to me.”

And Alex doesn’t think it’s fair that he can still blush when he by all rights doesn’t have any blood anymore, but them’s the breaks. “You started it.”

The mid afternoon sun is streaming down hot against his back, and he’s starting to wonder if ghosts can still sweat, and then that brings up the thought that maybe he should have picked a shirt that wasn’t going to show him pitting out so easily. But Alex likes his baby blue shirt, and he only has so many clothes nowadays.

Willie leans back on his board, putting some distance between them. He’s grinning widely as he says, “All right hotdog; show me what you’ve got.”

And that’s the only warning Alex gets before Willie is rolling down the boardwalk, outpacing him in the time it takes for Alex to register he’s even gone.

“...okay,” he mutters, too amused to even be annoyed. He kicks off, swerving around the throngs of people that Willie is skating directly through, person by person.

He wonders why Willie can do that so easily, pop right through lifers without feeling residuals from their souls. When he’d walked through Carrie, he could actually feel the squirming knot of anxiety in her stomach as she performed. It’d been weird, feeling someone else’s emotions.

He thinks it might have something to do with Willie not being in possession of his own soul, and as soon as he has that thought, he shoves it behind him as he makes a mad dash to keep up.

When he does, he knows he’s gotten there faster than Willie expected from the way his eyebrows go up in surprise. Alex can’t help the smirk on his face, setting a more sedate pace and tucking his hands into his back pockets as he skates with one foot out in front, a single back wheel rolling along the sidewalk.

It’s a trick he learned from Reggie, and he knows that as simple as it is, it looks rad as hell.

Yeah, okay, he really wants Willie to be impressed with this, he admits it.

“You said you were bad at them,” Willie says, thrilled laughter in his eyes. Alex shrugs.

“I’m about three seconds from falling on my ass at any given second here,” he confesses, bringing his foot back down to skate normally. "I've got the wicked bruises to prove it."

Willie stops short, and not expecting it, Alex nearly trips as he keeps going. He turns around to find Willie staring at him curiously.

People bustle around them in churning groups of twos and threes, but Willie stands stock-still, one foot on his board and one on the ground.

"You have...bruises. From falling." He says slowly.

Confused, Alex nods and Willie reaches out, wraps his hand around Alex's elbow and tugs him over to a nearby bench. He gestures for Alex to sit, looking suddenly anxious.

"Show me."

"What?"

Willie looks flat out freaked, the locks that have escaped his braid wisping around his face in the light breeze. "Show me, Alex."

So Alex does, rolling up the hem of his shorts a few inches. The bruise is still there, and Willie kneels on the ground to look at it closely. He looks concerned.

Willie pokes at it and Alex swats his hand.

"Why does everyone want to touch my injury?" He asks, half despairing. Willie doesn't look amused.

"Alex," he says, incredibly seriously. "I've been dead for like thirty years, I've wiped out a thousand times. I've never. _Never._ Gotten a bruise."

Alex swallows. "...okay…"

What did that even _mean_ for them? He’d chalked it up to the afterlife just being kind of crappy, but what if it meant something else? Was he really a ghost anymore, if Julie could touch him and he could bruise like a living, breathing person? But he could still do other ghost things, and nobody could see him, as evidenced by the fact that not one person was giving the two boys a second glance.

Anxiety twists in his stomach, and his hands twitch for his drumsticks.

Willie bites his lip. "I don't want to scare you, but...you're the weirdest ghost that’s ever existed, man."

Alex gives him a strained smile, his dead heart pounding. "Thanks."

And Willie must realize that he _has_ scared Alex with this information, because he crawls onto the bench next to him with a wry little grin. "I've never gotten a bruise after death, but check this out-"

He turns around and reaches to pull up the back of his shirt, all the way up to his collar.

Alex swallows.

Toned expanse of skin and some very intriguing freckles but what has Alex’s attention is the purpley-yellow-green mottling that starts just below his shoulder blade.

It goes halfway across his back, in feathery little lines that morph into a vague rectangle.

"Jesus, is that a headlight?"

Willie nods, looking back over his shoulder at him. "Chevy oughta pay me for advertising."

Alex can't help it, and reaches out to trace a finger lightly along the marks of a truck's grill, left forever imprinted on Willie's back.

Willie tenses and sucks in a sharp gasp and Alex draws away. "Sorry. Does it hurt?"

Willie is staring at his feet, and to Alex's complete surprise, the tips of his ears are turning red with a luminous blush.

"Nah, doesn't hurt-" Willie mumbles. He drops his shirt back down, looking almost _embarrassed,_ and Alex realizes it was maybe a little bit weird to touch his back uninvited.

So he blurts out, "Julie found out that we used to take my sister skating, but she bought me the wrong kind of skates and I didn't want to tell her, so-" he gestures at his feet, and taps the toes of his rollerblades together.

Willie shakes his head fondly, bringing his feet up to sit cross legged on the bench. “Yeah, that's on brand for you," he says. "You’ve never mentioned your sister.”

Alex fidgets, squinting into the sun. “Mel," he says softly. "I don’t like to think about her too much. It bums me out. She was three years younger than me. But yeah, we used to take her skating on Saturdays, me and Reggie and Luke. Bobby used to come too, sometimes. He couldn’t skate worth shit, though.”

“What was she like?”

He snorts. “Annoying,” he rubs his hands together, staring down at his new rollerblades, at all the places he’s already scuffed them by falling onto concrete. “Amazing. She was my baby sister, you know?”

He turns his head to look at Willie, but Willie isn’t looking at him. He’s back to gazing at his own sneakers, and Alex swallows against the lump in his throat.

Despite the sunny day, Alex feels suddenly so cold.

“It was just me and my mom,” Willie says quietly. “We moved out here after she left my dad,” he picks up his board and rests it, wheels up, across his knees. Like a security blanket. “I went to see her once, you know, _after_ , but-” he sniffs, blinking hard.

Alex doesn’t waste a second in throwing his arm over Wille’s shoulders, pulling him in close. The skateboard digs into his bruised leg, but Alex doesn’t care. He’s coming to find out that Willie is a big fan of his hugs, and this time is no different as Willie tucks his head under Alex’s chin. 

He fits like he belongs there.

“I was all she had left, and then she didn’t have me anymore.”

Anything that he could say to that would just sound trite and pathetic, so he says nothing, and holds Willie closer, his thumb rubbing little circles into his bicep. They sit like that for a while, the light breeze toying with their hair as they soak in the bright rays of the afternoon. The noise of the boardwalk is a comfortingly dull roar around them, the presence of people still a reassurance even for a pair of long dead boys.

Alex sighs. “I wasn’t ready for the guilt of leaving people behind when I’m the one who straight up _died_.”

Willie snorts a laugh. “Right? ‘Cause we totally got a say in it.”

He seems to have recovered, though when he pulls away Alex can see that his eyes are just a touch puffy. Willie swings his board down to the side and stands up, offering Alex his hand.

As he lets Willie pull him to his feet, Alex feels lighter. The weight of his sister’s memory is still heavy on his shoulders, but talking about her, even just a little, has felt good. Felt right.

And it feels right to reach out and hold Willie’s jaw, press his mouth to his, and chuckle into the kiss when he realizes that Willie is on his tiptoes to reach him.

He breaks away first, and Willie reaches out to lace their fingers together, his board clutched by the truck in his other hand, and pulls Alex slowly along beside him in his skates.

He's humming a song under his breath, and Alex takes a moment to wonder if Luke would be cool with letting Willie join them for a jam sometime. He's got a nice voice.

Then he finally understands the words Willie is mumbling, and he laughs. It's an old song, one that Julie has been teasing him with since she gifted him the blades.

 _"...I got a brand new pair of roller skates, you got a brand new key…_ "

It's a beautiful day, he thinks, with the sunny sky above and being tugged along by a gorgeous boy, a gorgeous boy who keeps smiling at him and is interested in what he has to say and understands that sometimes he needs a little help breaking out of his own box of anxieties. 

A boy with his own past that Alex is desperate to unravel, to discover exactly what has brought Willie to where he is today. He's an open book, but it's written in a completely different language, and Alex wants to learn it so badly it makes his stupid dead heart ache in his ribs.

But for now, holding his hand, the spaces between his fingers filled so perfectly, this is enough.

**Author's Note:**

> hi i'm a child of the mid 90s and grew up in skating rinks so i decided there's no way alex doesn't know how to skate at all. but blades? them inlines? what is that i'm a quad squad girl.
> 
> pls comment and tell me if you liked it i am begging
> 
> and if u liked this then pls read and comment on my other jatp fics


End file.
